Internals, Testing Methodology and System Setup

Internals:

Opening the housing, we see the thermal pad conducting heat away from the Barefoot M00 controller and onto the housing back plate.

Opening further, we find DRAM and Toshiba A19 MLC flash. This is the 960GB model, and the extra space for another DRAM chip suggests the possibility of a 1,920GB model.

PCB Front:

PCB Rear:

16 flash packages in total, so expansion to 2TB capacities would require additional dies stacked within the flash packaging.

Testing Methodology

Our tests are a mix of synthetic and real-world benchmarks. PCMark, IOMeter, HDTach, HDTune, Yapt and our custom File Copy test round out the selection to cover just about all bases. If you have any questions about our tests just drop into the Storage Forum and we'll help you out!

Test System Setup

We currently employ a pair of testbeds. A newer ASUS P8Z77-V Pro/Thunderbolt and an ASUS Z87-PRO. Variance between both boards has been deemed negligible.

PC Perspective would like to thank ASUS, Corsair, and Kingston for supplying some of the components of our test rigs. 

 
Hard Drive Test System Setup
CPU Intel Core i7-4770K
Motherboard ASUS P8Z77-V Pro/TB / ASUS Z87-PRO
Memory Kingston HyperX 4GB DDR3-2133 CL9
Hard Drive G.Skill 32GB SLC SSD
Sound Card N/A
Video Card Intel® HD Graphics 4600
Video Drivers Intel
Power Supply Corsair CMPSU-650TX
DirectX Version DX9.0c
Operating System Windows 8.1 X64
  • PCPer File Copy Test
  • HDTach
  • HDTune
  • IOMeter
  • YAPT
« PreviousNext »